Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said yesterday he hoped the sadness evoked by the high death rate on the roads would touch "the psyche of the community", writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaic.
He was speaking after a weekend that saw six people killed on the Republic's roads, among them three teenage girls.
"It's like all of the accidents - they are horrific and they are all very sad stories for the families, for friends and for communities," Mr Ahern said.
"All we can continue to do is to urge people to show caution."
He added: "None of these accidents makes anyone other than very sad, and I hope that just gets through to the psyche of the community. The people who can do something about it, to be frank with you, are the people who are driving cars every day."
The year's death toll climbed to over 220 this weekend. In the latest incident, a 77-year-old woman was killed when she was struck by a car while crossing the road in the village of Dromineer, Co Tipperary, at about 1pm yesterday. She was Juliana Roberts from Dromineer.
In Co Kilkenny, 14-year-old Catherine Doyle, from Mile Post, Slieverue, was killed on Saturday evening when the car in which she was a front-seat passenger hit a wall at Hugginstown shortly after 8pm. Her body was removed to Waterford Regional Hospital, Ardkeen.
Less than 24 hours earlier, two 15-year-old girls died when the car in which they were travelling hit a ditch in Co Limerick.
The crash happened at 12.50am on Saturday at Killinane, Galbally.
Leanne Miller, of Kilteely in Limerick, died instantly. The second girl, who was a rear-seat passenger, died from injuries sustained in the crash in Limerick Regional Hospital yesterday morning. The girls had been returning home from a teenage disco in Co Tipperary when the car left the road on a bend. Two young men, one the driver, were treated in hospital for minor injuries.
Elsewhere in Co Limerick, a 20-year-old man died when the van he was driving was involved in a single-vehicle crash at Tournafulla at about 5am yesterday. A local, he was named as John Roche.
In Co Wexford, a 27-year-old motorcyclist, Stephen Cleary, from Clonskeagh, in Dublin, was killed when his bike collided with a car at 7am yesterday on the Arklow Road in Gorey.
A senior Catholic bishop said yesterday accepting the inevitability of carnage on the roads was not a Christian option.
In a letter read at Masses across the Diocese of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh said: "If each one of us takes more seriously our obligation to drive carefully, our obligation not to indulge in alcohol or other drugs when driving, our obligation to obey the rules of the road and not to ignore speed limits, then lives will be saved and we will have less broken-hearted parents, brothers, sisters and friends carrying a burden of sadness throughout their lives."
Only when those responsibilities are taken seriously can we demand that politicians, gardaí and other road-users do the same, he added.